Water Education Mural Project

Here’s a little update on our Water Education Mural Project at the Carlo Bravo Escuela on the Calzada in Granada. Thanks to generous donors we are 20% of the way toward paying for a shade structure to cover over the beautiful new water education mural within the Carlo Bravo schoolyard. With protection from the elements the murals vivid colors and whimsical graphic depicting of how water cycles eternally will continue to enrich children’s learning experience and transforms the schoolyard space. Without protection, the mural will deteriorate and disappear within 4 years.

The gigantic mural was created and funded by Leslie Warren, Director and Founder of International PEACE Projects* and Jairo Sandino, with help from Linda McCrary, Nancy Bergman and Amy Bushnell over one week in late February.

Already teachers are using the mural to teach science and environmental concepts, art and it is creating curiosity and wonder among the many thousands of students to attend Carlo Bravo School. We’ve created work sheets that will help children integrate terminology associated with the Ciclo del Agua (Water Cycle) and the concept Cuenca (Watershed) with environmental function. It is a science curricula suitable for all ages in a school attended by 7,000 students daily!

With normal weathering, this amazing mural and all the benefits it accrues to school children and teachers will essentially disappear in three years. Despite the fact that we used professional mural paints imported for the project, sun and rain will fade and wash away the mural until it is gone.

Will each of you kind readers please donate 600 cords or $20 toward a shade structure over the mural that to protect it from rain and sun. The shade structure will extend the life of the mural for 20 years and more. It will endure as a teaching tool, inspiration and sense of wonder for children for decades with simple protection by a roof.

Will you help us preserve this work of art and this outdoor education resource for students and teachers?

We estimate the cost of the shade structure at $5,000.00. This seems like a lot, but it must be structurally engineered because it will rise above a mural approximately 60 feet high and project out approximately 60 feet while covering a wall area approximately 150 feet long.

If 500 people gave $10, we’d have it “covered”.
If 1000 people gave $5, that would get it done too.

Any way you cut it, we need a lot of people to give a little or a lot to get this shade structure in place before the rains start in May.

How can you give? The mural was funded by International PEACE Projects (IPP). IPP has a web site (www.internationalPEACEprojects.com ) where you can make your donation securely through PAYPAL. Please share this request for donations with all of your friends in the ex-pat community and together we can preserve this wonderful resource for Granada’s children.

MANY THANKS.

Leslie Warren
*International PEACE Projects 14 water education murals can be viewed throughout Nicaragua on public buildings, in schools and health clinics. The organization creates water education murals to educate people about ways that each of us can protect the life giving resource – water. International PEACE Projects’ web site is www.internatonalPEACEprojects.org and has, since 2008, developed projects that support People as they aspire to a high quality of life through Education, Art, Community building and Environmental enhancements – PEACE.